About Us

The ACCESS Program was a 5-year global program, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), that improved the health and survival of mothers and their newborns in more than 25 countries. Awarded to Jhpiego in 2004, Program partners were Save the Children, Constella Futures, the Academy for Educational Development, the American College of Nurse-Midwives and IMA World Health. The ACCESS Program ended 31 December 2009.

USAID’s follow-on project for maternal and newborn health was MCHIP, awarded to Jhpiego and partners in September 2008. Click here to be redirected.

ACCESS worked with USAID missions, governments, nongovernmental organizations, local communities and partner agencies in developing countries to expand coverage, access and use of maternal and newborn health services and improve household health behaviors and practices.

The Program promoted a continuum of care in women’s health across the life cycle—focusing on women of reproductive age and extending, where opportunities existed, to younger and older women. ACCESS also improved health delivery by strengthening the facility, connecting the household to the facility, and mobilizing family and community members to make the links necessary to care for mothers and newborns.

The Program improved access to knowledge of newborn health with the development and dissemination of tools and materials. This included the 2006 ACCESS-supported U.S. launch of the Lancet Maternal Survival Series, and production of a comprehensive learning resource package (Best Practices in Essential and Basic Emergency Maternal and Newborn Care).

ACCESS also worked with in-service partners to train more than 1,000 providers in essential and basic emergency obstetric care and to improve the quality of obstetric services in hospitals and clinics. To improve care for low birth weight newborns, the Program supported host governments to implement and scale up facility-based Kangaroo Mother Care in hospitals and health centers in five countries.

Resources

* Coming soon * Tools and resources from the ACCESS partnership related to community and clinical interventions, policy and advocacy, and special initiatives.

Associate Awards

Associate Awards are cooperative agreements or grants, which USAID Missions or regional bureaus develop with the "Leader" of a Leader with Associates cooperative agreement.

ACCESS had three associate awards:

The ACCESS-FP Program promoted innovative family planning programs and the integration of family planning as a lifesaving intervention at every point along the household-to-hospital continuum of care. The program increased recognition of family planning as an essential component of maternal, neonatal and child health care.

ACCESS- Health Service Support Project (HSSP) in Afghanistan improved service delivery and quality of basic health services in Afghanistan. In concert with the Ministry of Public Health, HSSP provided support to nongovernmental organizations to improve the planning, management, implementation and monitoring of the delivery of a high-quality Basic Package of Health Services —the framework of primary and secondary health service delivery—in 13 provinces.

ACCESS/Cambodia Program introduced a project to demonstrate the safety, acceptability, feasibility, and program effectiveness (SAFE) of community-based distribution of misoprostol by skilled providers and trained community health volunteers to reduce postpartum hemorrhage at home births in the country. The project informed scale up of this approach throughout the country, and included a component aimed to expand use of the active management of the third stage of labor among deliveries conducted by skilled providers.